


Neverland // Dan & Phil

by laughingcryingdying



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, M/M, Phanfiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-17 11:51:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4665528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingcryingdying/pseuds/laughingcryingdying
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Daniel Howell moves there, he's invisible. He's the nerd. The foreigner. He doesn't exist. And then, out of nowhere, he does. Suddenly, he's a part of Them––the dreamers and forgottens, the ones who swear they're getting out of the small town and the small school and going somewhere. They're crazy and talented and in love with life, and lead by the ever more lovable Phil, who calls him Dan and brings him into their inner circle when he has no one. <br/>But they aren't okay. None of them are, and whether it's masked by laughing or drinking, partying or screaming, they can't hide what's destroying them. Because maybe there isn't a way out. Because maybe they're all alone. And as Dan continues to fall more and more in love with Phil through the loud nights and early mornings and confusion, Phil continues to fall more and more out of love with everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Good For You

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!! So a few things. Firstly a disclaimer: this is obviously an AU, which means that all the youtubers in it have been ALTERED (sometimes severely) in some way or another in order to work with the story.  
> Also, this is a multi chapter fic, so this is just the beginning. I'll be (HOPEFULLY) putting up a chapter every week, so we'll see what happens. Anyway, enough of me talking. Enjoy the first chapter :)

 

They were going to live forever.

That’s what they told themselves, anyway.

Because then, there was no ending. There was no future. There was no after.

They lived sunset to sunset as it sank beneath the jagged rocks, melting into a puddle at the bottom of the sky.

They ran faster than they ran away from home, screen doors slamming, flip flops hitting their heels in the beat of their racing hearts.

They drove faster than they could, pushing metal to metal to rubber to toe, screaming as the speedometer needle rose to one hundred and kept rising.

 _We’re going to live forever_ , they said as they inhaled smoke like it was air, ashes floating to the ground and sparks fizzing out in the dust.

 _We’re going to live forever_ , they sang as they chugged vodka by bottle, playing bowling with the empty ones and using it to light bonfires and forget.

 _We’re going to live forever_ , they screamed as they drove faster than they could, the closest they could get to flying as they sprung over ravines and rocks and into the air for those few precious seconds where weight didn’t exist and the ground was just a memory.

There were twelve of them. There used to be fifteen. One moved. One stopped. One died.

Too much to drink and a walk along the edge of a highway bridge do not a way to live make, unless your plan is to die. They never figured that one out. Or maybe they just never remembered it.

It was a sunny morning in mid March when Daniel walked into the room, English literature book clutched under one arm and shoulder bag over the other.

"Class," the teacher announced. Her name was Mrs. Allred. Or maybe it was Allard. Daniel couldn't remember, not when there were twenty three other students staring at him like they didn't give a damn. "Class," Mrs. Allred/Allard repeated, "we have a new student who will be joining us today. Everyone, this is Daniel. He's come to join us all the way from England."

Some of the students started paying attention. Allred/Allard smiled smugly. "I knew that would spark your interest. He's a _foreigner!”_ She said the last word with mock fascination, as if Daniel was the most interesting thing she'd ever laid eyes on. Laughing, she sat down at her desk and gestured to him. "Take it away, Daniel. Tell us about yourself."

“Um.” He was hating this already, hating everything about this situation––the twenty four pairs of eyes boring into him, the way he could hear the clock ticking, the way it was so hot in the classroom. “My name is Daniel Howell, I’m from London, and I’m sixteen.”

“So why don’t you tell us why you’re here?” Allred/Allard interrupted.

“Alright.” He shifted from one foot to the other. His rucksack was growing heavy on his shoulder. “Um, my dad’s job got relocated here temporarily. So here I am.”

“How’re you sixteen?” Someone called. “This is a senior class!”

“Oh, I skipped a couple grades.” He instantly regretted telling the truth, because who knew what it’d brand him as. He wished he’d just said he was eighteen. As if he needed any more excuses to be an outcast. He was already new and from a different country, and now he was the nerd who skipped grades, too.

Silence. Someone in the back snickered. Daniel shot the teacher a look that clearly said, _please can I sit down now this has been enough torture for today._

“Very well,” she said. “You can have a seat in the third seat of the sixth row.” Relieved, he slunk over to the desk and sat down. It was the only available desk in the room, besides the one behind him. Someone had scratched Becca is a slut into the fake wood. Daniel felt bad for Becca. He wondered if this was her seat in another class.

“Alright, if we’ll open to page one hundred thirty-seven, we will be reading Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18. Now before we begin, does anyone know of the controversial backstory that circulates this work?”

 _It was written about a man_ , Daniel thought. He didn’t raise his hand, though. He didn’t need to add teachers pet to the list. He focused on opening his book and pulling out a notebook from his bag.

“It was written about a man.” Daniel looked up. There was a tall boy leaning against the doorframe. His rucksack was slung carelessly over one shoulder and he was wearing dark jeans, ratty black sneakers, and a partially unbuttoned shirt. His black hair slightly covered his piercing blue eyes, which were so light they didn’t seem real. There was a crooked little half smile playing at his lips.

Mrs. Allred/Allard crossed her arms. “Correct. But that doesn’t excuse you being late, Phil.”

The half smile turned into a sheepish grin. “Sorry, Mrs. Allard,” the boy said, “at least I got the question right.” The class laughed, even though what he’d said wasn’t particularly funny. They seemed to feed off of his laid back attitude. The boy––Phil––pushed his dark hair out of his eyes and walked to his seat. Which happened to be the only empty seat, which was behind Daniel’s.

He realized this just as the boy was nearing his desk, and he quickly tried to look down and be as unnoticeable as possible before the boy noticed him and said something. Unfortunately, he wasn’t quick enough. They locked eyes for a millisecond––the half smile returned––before Phil dropped his bag down at the desk behind him and sat down with a thud.

Daniel felt his face grow hot for no reason, and he tucked his head down and stared at his book, trying to focus. As the class wore on, he spent the time trying to calculate how many days he had left until school let out. Sixty four. He could make it to sixty four.

The next two weeks were uneventful. Daniel walked back and forth from school to the new house every day, as the sun got hotter and sank slower through the sky. Arizona was so much hotter than London, and it felt like summer even though it was the beginning of spring.

His parents were both busy with work, and as a result, could spend little time with him. He was partially fine with this, because if they didn’t spend time together they wouldn’t talk, and if they didn’t talk they wouldn’t start asking him about school, and if he’d made any new friends yet.

He hadn’t.

He tried not to care. It’s not like people were being mean to him or anything. He was just invisible. The weird quiet foreign kid who was younger than everyone and knew no one. Maybe it was the age gap. Maybe it was because he was from somewhere else. Maybe it was because he’d come in out of nowhere when everyone had known each other for years.

When the final bell would ring, Daniel would walk back to the house from school. It was around five blocks away, and sometimes it was boiling out. But he lived too close to school to take the bus and his parents always needed the car for work, so he walked. When it didn’t feel like forty degrees out, he’d take his time on the walk and take in the scenery. Well, if you could consider it scenery. The Howell’s house was five blocks away from the school in a straight line. If you went down the roads past their house to the left or right, parallel to the school, things became jarringly different. Driving to the left, the split level homes with connected garages turned into mcmansions with rock lined pools. To the right, they became square houses with cracked concrete and chipping paint. Daniel found living in the middle fascinating. You could go a few blocks left or right and end up in an entirely different place; wealth fanning out on one side and poverty on the other.

That didn’t mean he loved the walk, though. The heat combined with his all black attire and a heavy rucksack didn’t exactly make his journey enjoyable. He didn’t complain, though. He just went back and forth, sidewalk to classroom, classroom to sidewalk, counting days. When Daniel got back to the house, he’d speed through his homework in half an hour, then lock himself in his room and write until his parents called up to him for dinner. Sometimes he didn’t even know what he was writing. It was like he went into a trance, where thinking didn’t exist and the only thing that mattered was putting his mind on paper. Words spilled out of him and his pen fought to keep up with his thoughts, his hand smearing ink as he scratched at the paper. He filled page after page, notebook after notebook. After dinner, he’d read through what he’d written. The best pages he’d save; folding them up and putting them in an empty moving box stashed under his bed. The others he’d throw out.

Daniel was sitting in the school library going over his English Lit essay when someone tapped him on the shoulder and changed everything. Seriously, everything. It’s strange to think how one action can change the course of history. And how you don’t realize until it’s too late. He realized it too late. Much later; after everything, when he was sitting in his room staring out his window, looking but not seeing, living on autopilot.

 

He shifted slightly, trying to turn around to see who it was who’d tapped him. His English Lit paper was in a scattered pile in front of him and he had one earbud in, his pencil tapping absentmindedly to the beat.

“Hey,” Phil said, smiling the crooked little half smile. He leaned against the edge of the table. “Dan, right? You’re in Allard’s first period?”

“Daniel, yeah. Yes, I am.” He was stuttering slightly. Maybe it was from all of the spontaneous human interaction.

“Great. This may sound kinda strange, but could you help me?”

“What?”

“With my essay. You write a lot; I’m sure you have a strong voice. So maybe you could help me with mine?”

“Uh, alright. Yeah, sure.” He didn’t really know why he was agreeing. But Phil was the only person besides his teachers and parents who’d talked to him in weeks. “Wait, how’d you know I write?”

Phil pointed to his hands, which were resting on the table. “The side of your hand is always covered in ink.” He grinned. “Sorry if I freaked you out. It’s a bad habit. I’m always, like, observing.”

Daniel smiled timidly. “D’you want me to read it now, or . . . ?”

“Yeah, that’d be great.” He sat down across from him at the round table, rummaged around in his rucksack for a second, and then pulled out a slightly wrinkled pile of papers. He slid them across the table. “Knock yourself out.”

Daniel picked up the pile and started reading. It was kind of unnerving, especially because he could feel Phil watching him as he turned the pages. But it was _brilliant_. It was brilliant, and it was just a stupid school essay on Shakespeare. He didn’t want to change anything about it. He didn’t want to interrupt what Phil had done. He just wanted to read more. He tried to focus on finding parts that could be improved, because he didn’t want to endlessly gush when Phil asked him what he thought. Daniel skimmed through it again. It was mostly grammatical errors; misspellings and improper citations.

“Well?”

“It was amazing.” Daniel felt himself blush, and he tried to stop the stupid grin on his face.

Phil laughed. “D’you really think so?”

“Yeah––I mean, yeah. It’s just spelling mistakes and stuff like that. Nothing major.” After a second, he added, “it’s really good.”

Phil smiled, leaning on the back legs of his chair. “Thank you,” he said, pushing some hair out of his eyes.

Daniel passed the paper back to him, trying to think of something to say. “Could you read mine? I mean, you don’t have to. Only if you want to. But it would be nice if you could, so I can get an opinion?” he finished lamely.

“Of course.” Phil jutted his chin in the direction of the papers in front of Daniel. As he slid them across the table in Phil’s direction, he started to regret it. Phil’s essay had been so _good_. What if his was terrible in comparison? He absentmindedly adjusted his hair, turning a pencil over and over in his hands as Phil read through it. He watched him out of the corner of his eye as he read, his lips moving slightly as he turned the pages.

“So?” Daniel said after a few minutes, trying to keep the nervousness out of his voice.

Phil smiled. It wasn’t the crooked little half smile though, it was a full-on smile that got his whole face involved. “It’s good. It’s _good_.”

Daniel felt his face grow hot again. “It is?”

Phil nodded vigorously. “I love your analogies. And the conclusion.”

Daniel smiled carefully. “Thanks.” This was really weird.

Phil handed him back the stack. “Maybe just change the wording of the first paragraph on the second page.”

“Okay,” he said, trying to disguise his voice from sounding completely relieved that Phil liked it. Which, to be honest, he was.

The bell rang, and Phil got up, shoving the papers back into his bag. He started to turn away, then stopped. “Hey,” he said. “This is also really strange, but could you help my friends with their papers? We’re in the same English class, and they’re struggling and tired of hearing my advice all the time.”

“Uh, okay,” Daniel said. ‘Yeah, that’d be okay.”

His face lit up with a smile again. “Great! They’ll love you for this. Is tomorrow after school good for you?”

Of course it was. It wasn’t like he had any plans. “Alright.”

“Great! We meet up at the South entrance, so just look for us there.” The library was starting to get noisier as kids started grabbing their stuff and making their way to class.

Daniel nodded. “Okay. I’ll see you then.”                      

The next day when the final bell rang, Daniel called his mom at the office to say he was staying after school to study with a friend. Then he walked to the South entrance. Stepping out into the blinding sun, he squinted, shielding his eyes with his hand. He couldn’t see anyone, and for a second he wondered if maybe it was a set up; if maybe Phil and his friends were watching him from a window and laughing. He swallowed. Of course something like this would happen. The only time people noticed him was to make fun of him. He pulled at the strap of his rucksack for a moment, then started to walk through the parking lot to the road that went towards his house.

“Dan!” His head swiveled in the direction of the voice. Phil was leaning out the window of a pickup truck. The pickup itself was old and clunky, spray-painted about twenty colors in different places, and dented in more than one spot. The licence plate was duct taped to the back bumper. And there were people spilling out of it. Literally spilling out of it  Daniel recognized a few people from his English class among them, crammed into the front seat leaning out the windows and lounging on lawn chairs in the truck bed. There were more people too, leaning against the truck next to bikes.

“There you are, Dan,” Phil continued. He hopped out of the passenger side of the truck, grabbed Daniel by the shoulder, and pulled him to the pickup.

“Uh, it’s Daniel, actually,” he said as Phil dragged him towards the people.

Phil laughed. “I know.” He gestured at the people in front of them. “Dan, this is everyone. Everyone, this is Dan.” The group chorused their hellos. “Dan’s here because he’s a literary genius, and we all know that you’re tired of my help,” Phil went on, “and besides, he needs friends.”

He turned to Daniel. “Sorry. It’s my observation.”

Some of them laughed. “Phil and his observations,” one of the girls said, pushing some blonde hair out of her face. She had bright red lipstick and was wearing a leather jacket even though it was boiling out. Daniel smiled nervously and watched as Phil opened the passenger side door and squished in. Phil pointed to him. “You may want to ride on a bike. Niomi’s driving is not for the faint hearted.”

“Hey!” The girl in the driver’s seat cried in fake annoyance. “I passed the test!”

“Yeah, after four times,” said one of the girls leaning against the truck. She had short hair that was bleached blonde and dyed pastel colors, and was wearing a black dress with pale pink combat boots. She looked at Daniel and grinned, then gestured at her bike, which was also pastel and black. “You can ride on my handlebars.”

“Thanks Lou,” Phil called, closing the passenger side door.

“Um, okay,” Daniel said. Lou climbed onto her bike and he stood on his tiptoes, gripped the handlebars, jumped slightly, and landed half on-half off. She laughed as he struggled to get balanced, finally settling on the handlebars with his legs hanging over her white wicker basket. His long lanky legs nearly touched the ground.

“Ready?”

“Um,” he said again.

“Okay! I’m going!” The girl named Niomi announced. Or maybe it was a warning. She slid on a pair of sunglasses, took a determined breath, and then backed out of the parking lot. Lou and the other people on bikes swerved out of her way, and Daniel clung onto the bike’s basket to avoid falling on his face on the concrete. He understood why Niomi had taken the driving test four times.

They moved as a group out of the parking lot. Black Canyon was a small town, and it was the middle of the afternoon so the roads were empty. The sun was hot, and the sky stretched on forever across the ground, disappearing and reappearing behind the mountains in the distance. The mountains weren’t like Daniel had expected––they weren’t triangle-shaped or covered in snow. They stood in stiff, crumbling cliffs of burnt orange rock. In some places they were even black, like they’d been scorched after being in the sun for thousands of years.

It occurred to Daniel about ten minutes after they’d been riding that he had no idea where they were going. They could be taking him to a remote location to kill him for all he knew. “So where are we going, exactly?” He shouted to Lou. They were riding fast besides the pickup truck, the wind whipping his hair against his forehead and crashing into his ears.

“Black Canyon desert,” Lou shouted back.

“Um, why?”

“You’ll see.” They were at the top of a steep hill, and Lou poked him in the back. “Hold on.”

“Um.” Daniel tightened his grips on the handlebars and tried to clamp his legs around the basket. Out of nowhere, as they reached the edge of the hill, Lou picked up speed. She rode faster and faster, switching into fifth gear, and Daniel watched as all the other bikers did the same as the truck started to go faster.

Lou’s petals were clanking as she gave the final push that made the bike fly over the hill. They barrelled forwards, the bikers and car passengers screaming. Daniel squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then opened them.

He was flying.

At least, that’s how it felt. His feet were inches from the ground and he was levitating, soaring through the air at breakneck speed. The faded dashed yellow lines on the road were blurring together and he was inches between the ground and the air, and he was flying. He was sitting on the handlebars of a stranger, surrounded by strangers who were whooping and screaming, the wind playing with their hair as they lifted their hands off the handlebars. And he was flying. Levitating. Weightless. He had never felt like this before. He looked around at everyone else. Most of them were screaming at the top of their lungs, hands raised over their heads. Some people in the back of the truck were standing up. The only one besides Daniel who wasn’t screaming was Phil, and Daniel watched as he stared out the windshield with a dazed expression and a huge smile on his face. One hand was out of the window in the wind, and his hair was blowing over his eyes. He looked like he’d disappeared, like he’d gotten up and walked away and left this dazed shell in his place.

The hill turned back into flat road, and the screaming died away. Daniel floated back down to the ground, to reality, to having a weight again. He glanced over at Phil out of the corner of his eye. His smile had faded slightly, and he was leaning against the edge of the open window. He’d floated back down, too.

****  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: this is obviously an AU, which means that all the youtubers in it have been ALTERED (sometimes severely) in some way or another in order to work with the story.
> 
> Hi!! Sorry that it's taken me so long to update, I was on vacation for the past two weeks so I didn't get to write that much and had limited computer access. This month I'm starting school again, so chapters may be more inconsistent and may not be every week (lets be honest they are definitely not going to be every week because I am inconsistent af). Anyway, enjoy the second chapter!! :)

When Niomi pulled the truck to an abrupt stop, Daniel wasn’t quite sure where they were. Scratch that, he had absolutely no idea where they were. Lou braked sharply, causing him to nearly fall onto his face, and he clambered off the bike relieved to be alive. He looked around, squinting through the blinding sun. They’d gone off the main highway down a dirt road that stopped abruptly about five meters later. Surrounding them in a large circle were four concrete foundations, a fifth one half finished and a sixth one marked by a deep rectangular hole dug in the ground. Old lawn chairs were scattered around the area. Near the dirt road, a few bins were filled with empty bottles and cans. There was an old, rusted trailer sitting on one of the foundations, and in the center of the circle there was a small pit filled with ashen logs that must have been for bonfires. Around the area brambles and weeds sprouted out of every crack in the concrete. There weren’t any trees; there was hardly anything besides this for as far as Daniel could see. The highway in the distance was vacant. The mountains jarred sharply against the horizon, looming up beyond the flatness of the desert.

Phil came up beside him, throwing an arm around his shoulder and gesturing around them with a flourish. “Welcome to paradise.”

Daniel looked around. It sure didn’t look like paradise. “So um . . .” He struggled to find something to say. “What is this place?”  _Is this where I die?_

“Black canyon flats. More specifically, the Black Canyon Devo.” Seeing Daniel’s confused look, he explained, “Back in the late seventies they got this great idea to build a subdivision neighborhood out here. Then halfway through laying the foundations, they realized that no one wanted to live in the desert. So they abandoned the project, and voila. Come on.” He took him by the arm and led him over to one of the foundations, where everyone was gathered on lawn chairs and ratty beach towels stretched out on the hot concrete.

“So everyone,” Phil said to the group, who looked up at him from where they were sitting like he was a god, “as I was saying, this is Dan. He’s an innocent foreign little fetus, but he’s a smart innocent foreign little fetus, and from what I’ve read, his writing makes all of you look like slackers.” Some of the people groaned. “It’s an _observation_ ,” Phil said. The group laughed. Someone threw an empty can at him, and he batted it out of the way and threw it back. “Anyway. Dan is here to help you all because he’s a good egg. He has no idea what he’s getting into.” The group was silent for a second, and Daniel felt suddenly uneasy. “With your writing, I mean,” Phil clarified quickly. “He has quite the job ahead of him.” They all regained their carefree attitude, and Phil began pointing each of them out. “Of course you know Lou, and then there’s Zoe, Alfie,” he pointed to Lou, and then to her left; at the petite girl with long hair and the tall boy lying next to her. “Joe, Zoe’s baby brother, and then there's Jack and Finn. Finn and Jack. I can never tell the difference.” The two identical boys shoved Phil amicably. “There’s Troye and Carrie, our musical prodigies.” He gestured to a short boy and a girl with a wild mane of curly hair. “Lex, our family activist,” Phil pointed to the girl Daniel recognized from the truck earlier, the one with the leather jacket and bright red lipstick. “Lilly is the one with the ridiculously long black hair,” the girl waved, “and you know Niomi, our maniac driver.”

“Hey!” Niomi said hotly, “I got us here, didn’t I?”

“And we are lucky to be in one piece.” Phil deadpanned, taking a seat on one of the empty chairs before turning back to Daniel. “Have a seat,” he said, pointing to one of the empty chairs.

“Okay.” Daniel sat down and opened his rucksack, taking out his paper. He wasn’t really sure why he took it out because he’d already finished it, but he had nothing else to do. “So Dan, can you help me with mine?” Lilly asked, pushing her long black hair out of her face and pulling her essay from her rucksack.

“Sure.” Lilly handed him her paper as Joe piped in, “oh, can you help me, too?”

“I just need help with my conclusion,” Zoe said.

“Could you look over mine?” Jack added.

Daniel couldn’t help but smile as he collected all the papers. “Sure.” They all looked visibly relieved. He noticed Phil out of the corner of his eye, smiling proudly. Daniel sat back down and started reading through the first essay. He marked revisions in red pen, calling out the person’s name when he’d finished. After he went over his suggestions and corrections with them, they went to improve their paper, and he started on the next.

Dusk was setting as Daniel read through the last papers. It was taking longer than he expected, but he knew his parents wouldn’t worry. They were still working, and besides, it was a small town. Nothing really happened here, right?

The group was gathered around him in a semicircle, chewing on their erasers and scratching out parts of their essays. Phil flipped on the battery operated lantern nearby, and Daniel was vaguely aware of Zoe lighting the hanging votives that were tied to the awning of the trailer.

“Again with the candles?” Someone called.

“They’re pretty!” Zoe and Phil said in unison.

Once he’d finished going over the paper, someone came back to him to ask him another question. It was tiring, but Daniel liked it. He liked helping everyone and he liked being needed and he liked being noticed in the first place, because for the past few weeks he hadn’t existed.

He smelled the cigarettes before he saw them; too busy fixing spelling mistakes on Alfie’s paper to notice. When he did look up, he watched as they lit up with each other’s cigarette, pressing them end to end so that the embers spread from one to the other. Troye noticed him watching and held up the pack. “Want one?”

He shook his head, almost too quickly. Troye smiled like he was adorable. “You’re so innocent. Suit yourself.”

The stars were starting to prick the sky as Daniel finished the last edit. The ends of cigarettes glowed orange in the dark, and a calming quiet had settled over everyone. Half eaten bags of crisps were strewn across the concrete, and the group was hushed. The people who were still working yawned as they went over their papers for the final time. The ones who were done were stretched out, looking up at the sky and blowing smoke rings. The stars were amazingly visible here; where the highway streetlights in the distance were flickering or broken and the only other light came from candles and lanterns. Zoe had fallen asleep on her paper after finishing it, pen still in hand, and Alfie had carried her into the trailer before getting back to his paper. Daniel sensed something was going on between them, but he wasn’t sure.

One by one they finished; as the candles burned low and the cigarettes became smaller and smaller until they were stomped out in the dusty earth.

Niomi was the last to finish, and for some reason they counted down like it was New Year’s, cheering as she wrote the last word of her conclusion. The sky was an inky blue and the cliffs were dark shadows against it.

Phil got up and stood on a chair above them all, a paper in each hand. He cleared his throat with faux importance. “Thank you, Dan,” he said loudly. “Now we will all be so much closer to a passing grade.” The group laughed, chorusing their thank yous, and Daniel couldn’t help but grin as he tried not to blush.

He started to pack up his rucksack as everyone began picking up the empty bottles and wrappers.

“Hey, Dan.” Phil called. “You need a ride?” He was standing next to the truck. Carrie, Lilly, Joe, Zoe, Alfie, Jack, and Finn were already stuffed inside and sitting on the chairs in the truck bed.

“That would be great,” Daniel said. Phil moved his bag from the passenger’s side and Daniel sat down next to him. Phil drove them back up the hill and past the school. He went to the right first, dropping off Carrie and Jack and Finn in front of small square concrete houses on the dimly lit street. He dropped Lilly off a few blocks from Daniel’s house. Next he drove to the left, letting out Joe, Zoe, and Alfie in front of tall stone houses with manicured lawns and fancy cars parked in the driveways. Joe and Zoe’s house had a small fountain in the front yard.

Then he drove back to the middle. Daniel directed him to his house, and when they reached it, Phil double parked the truck, flipping on the blinkers. The house was dark; his parents hadn’t gotten home from work yet. Neither of them got out of the car. Daniel wondered why Phil hadn’t let him out when he’d dropped off Lilly.

“Thank you,” Dan blurted out.

Phil looked confused. “For what?”

Dan shrugged, wondering why he’d said so in the first place. “I don’t know. Just . . . Thanks, I guess. For including me.” _For making me feel needed and like I actually exist._

Phil’s half smile turned into a grin. “You’re so weird. You’re the one who helped everyone. I should be thanking you.”

“You did,” Dan pointed out. “Loudly.” Phil laughed. “So what about everyone else?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why didn’t they get dropped off? Do they bike back home?”

Phil shook his head. “The trailer is home to them. And me. There’s no way I’d go back to my house anytime soon. Same with the others. Their family lives pretty much suck.”

“Oh,” Daniel said. “Sorry,” he added after a second.

Phil shook his head. He smiled again, but it was different this time. Hollow. “It’s cool. What can I say, I lead a wild life.” He burst out laughing. “Just kidding. My life is pretty dull.”

“Not as dull as mine.” Daniel smiled. “I should get going.”

Phil nodded. “See you in class.”

“Thanks for the ride,” he said, throwing his bag over one shoulder and climbing out. He shut the door after him.

“No problem. They all love you, by the way. You should meet up with us on Saturday. Every weekend we have a thing at the Devo. It’s always fun.”

“Okay.”

Phil started the truck. It rattled and clanked, then came to life. He paused for a second, resting his arm against the open window. “Dan? Do you really think your life is dull?”

Daniel shrugged. “I guess,” he said truthfully.

The half smile. “I guess we’ll have to fix that.” He backed out of Daniel’s driveway and down the street towards the school; back the way they came. Daniel watched the truck until it became just a spot of light, and then until the light disappeared. It was cooler out now. The stars were duller, dimmed out by the streetlights. The mountains stood solemnly in the distance. The otherworldly haze that had cloaked everything at the Devo was gone now. Everything seemed normal again. He looked at the road once more, then turned around and went inside.


End file.
